Paperback Row

By Ihsan Taylor

Published: April 9, 2006

THE END OF POVERTY: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, by Jeffrey D. Sachs. (Penguin, $16.) Sachs makes a bold declaration: If wealthy countries increased their combined foreign aid budgets to between $135 billion and $195 billion for the next decade, that money could eliminate extreme global poverty by 2025. Too many countries, he argues, are caught in a ''poverty trap,'' a combination of poor geography, poor infrastructure and poor health care. Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a special adviser on global poverty to the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, also recounts his experiences as an adviser to distressed and developing nations, including Bolivia, Poland and Russia.

WINDOWS ON THE WORLD, by Fr?ric Beigbeder. Translated by Frank Wynne. (Miramax/Hyperion, $13.95.) This strangely moving novel alternates between the diarylike ruminations of ''Beigbeder'' -- a shiftless, self-impressed intellectual who feels impelled to write about 9/11 -- and an account of the death of a father and his two boys who were breakfasting at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the World Trade Center's north tower.

IN THE COMPANY OF CHEERFUL LADIES, by Alexander McCall Smith. (Anchor, $12.95.) In the sixth novel of the beguiling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, Precious Ramotswe's sociopathic first husband returns to Botswana and threatens to destroy her successful career and happy second marriage.

ASSASSINATION VACATION, by Sarah Vowell. (Simon & Schuster, $14.) Mixing history, travelogue and social criticism, these darkly comic essays survey the landscape of presidential assassinations. Vowell, a journalist and contributor to ''This American Life'' on public radio, focuses on the murders of Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield and William McKinley, visiting virtually every historical site associated with them. There are small revelations throughout the book -- Garfield's spine, removed during autopsy, was passed around to jurors during his assassin's trial -- as well as an examination of how these deaths have been used. In the Book Review, Bruce Handy called ''Assassination Vacation'' a ''learned, engagingly discursive, funny, sometimes even jolly ramble.''

A PERFECT STRANGER: And Other Stories, by Roxana Robinson. (Random House, $13.95.) Robinson's third story collection explores relationships and misunderstandings between people, usually family members, trying to overcome a creeping disenchantment with their lives. In the title story, a husband and wife privately feud while playing host to an opera scholar for the weekend. Our reviewer, Bliss Broyard, said Robinson ''is particularly good at charting the ebb and flow of affection and fury within relationships.''

CHARLOTTE: Being a True Account of an Actress's Flamboyant Adventures in Eighteenth-Century London's Wild and Wicked Theatrical World, by Kathryn Shevelow. (Picador, $16.) This is a vivid biography of Charlotte Charke (1713-60), wayward daughter of the comic actor and poet laureate Colley Cibber. Shevelow recreates Charlotte's prodigious theatrical rise and precipitous fall, and her enigmatic life offstage as a cross-dressing single mother and memoirist.

THE CHRYSANTHEMUM PALACE, by Bruce Wagner. (Simon & Schuster, $14.) In Wagner's latest piercing Hollywood satire, a 38-year-old struggling actor named Bertie Krohn lives in the shadow of his father, the creator of TV's longest-running science fiction series, ''Starwatch.'' Bertie has a recurring role on the show, but a complicated love triangle develops when he is joined on the set by his childhood sweetheart and her on-again-off-again lover. ''Wagner marries his dagger-sharp, lapidary wit to an emotionally arresting narrative whose phaser is set on scorch,'' Henry Alford wrote here.

PLAN B: Further Thoughts on Faith, by Anne Lamott. (Riverhead, $14.) In a series of smart, quirky essays, Lamott, the author of ''Operating Instructions'' and ''Traveling Mercies,'' meditates on personal and political matters, from her frustration over the war in Iraq to her evolving relationship with her teenage son. '' 'Plan B' is vintage Lamott -- the dry humor, the disarming self-loathing, the irreverence, the unshakable love of Jesus Christ,'' our reviewer, Lauren F. Winner, wrote. In DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR? An Unreligious Writer Investigates Religious Calling (Penguin, $15), Minna Proctor, a self-described secular Jew, discusses coming to terms with her father, a nonobservant Catholic who applies to become an Episcopal priest. Ihsan Taylor